The giant consequences of China’s 6.5%-7.0% growth target
- By John Ross
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E-mail China.org.cn, March 8, 2016
Socially, strong emphasis was given to poverty reduction, with central government funds being increased by 43 percent in 2016. Over the course of the Five Year Plan, all of China's 70 million people remaining in poverty will be lifted out of it, with 2016's goal being 10 million. Life expectancy, the most sensitive overall indicator of social well-being, is projected to rise by a further year during the Plan.
Achieving these goals will have truly dramatic consequences for China, constituting an enormous increase in human wellbeing. But to understand the world changing consequences of China achieving these goals, and therefore the scale of challenges faced, it is necessary to translate these figures into international standards.
China in 1949 was one of the world's least developed and poorest countries and has already transformed the world by achievements in poverty reduction. From 1981 to the latest World Bank data, 728 million people in China were lifted out of internationally defined poverty - the whole of the rest of the world achieved only 152 million. Now, after 37 years of rapid growth, China is about to transform the world towards the top range of international income levels
"Moderately prosperous" is a specifically Chinese target, but the World Bank establishes an international criterion for a "high income" economy - per capita GDP of $12,736 in 2016. While exchange rates would affect the exact figure, China achieving the 13th Five Year Plan's growth and inflation targets would bring it to the threshold of or exceeding World Bank criteria for a "high income" economy.
But in the latest World Bank data, the combined population of all high income economies is 1.368 billion, while China's population is 1.364 billion. China entering the ranks of high income economies would, in a single step, double the number of people living in these countries.
Chinese people achieving "moderate prosperity" would transform the global economic situation. It would also transform China's position in the world, being reflected in corresponding changes in China's defence spending and foreign policy weight. But as a consequence, rather than concentrating on the enormous step forward for humanity that China's "moderate prosperity" would constitute, some forces are attempting to block China's rise - even if this means China's people, one fifth of humanity, would not achieve prosperity.
The most powerful such forces are U.S. neo-cons whose goal, in the words of a recent study for the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations on "Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Towards China," was, "preserving U.S. primacy in the global system ought to remain the central objective of U.S. grand strategy in the twenty-first century." To practically achieve this, it called for "new trade arrangements in Asia that exclude China." Parallel anti-China propaganda campaign attempts are seen as otherwise inexplicable attempts to portray China as facing a "hard landing" when China's growth rate is almost three times that of the U.S. with China adding more to the world's GDP each year than the U.S.
The fact China has set a growth rate goal of 6.5 percent and above for the next five years has a far greater significance than in domestic terms alone. It is the most important economic target on the planet.
The writer is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:
http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/johnross.htm
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